Reply #100: "3,000 or 4,000 kids" ???

[iverglas]

"3,000 or 4,000 kids have died for nothing in Iraq--nothing but oil, I assume."

Strikes me as a bit of an underestimate.

... Oh yeah. That will be the USAmerican "kids" who have died in Iraq. Not the real kids who have died in Iraq.


If opposition in the US to the occupation of Iraq crystallizes around US military body bags this time around, as it did during the occupation of Vietnam, and if that is what brings this occupation to an end, as it did in the case of Vietnam ... well, the people of the US will once again have learned nothing. They will have learned nothing about their responsibility for what their government does, their responsibility for the harm they do in the world, their responsibility for other people's dead kids.

And until they do that -- until they have that crise de conscience, until they engage in that self-examination, until they take some fucking responsibility for their own actions -- they will continue to play out this self-absorbed, self-interested cycle of assaulting the world / withdrawing behind their picket fences, coming out again a decade later to assault someone else, withdrawing after a few years to lick their own wounds. Never acknowledging that what they have done is WRONG, and never engaging with the world in any way that will enhance everyone's security and liberty, including their own.

I'm no expert on Jerry Lewis's positions on political and social policy issues. But that line alone tells me that he's not exactly part of the solution.